Debate: Does God Exist? # 3

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makes a baby on the body of an unwed, under -aged teenager, and lets the child grow up and let his kid be killed as a child's sacrifice for him.

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And then the god -child man is then buried on a

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Friday and then on a Sunday morning, which is somehow interpreted as three days and three nights, Friday evening to Sunday, and supposedly comes out of the tomb.

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And all you have to do is believe that, and then you can be saved and be with the god forever.

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That's all. Just believe that. It's a very simplistic religion compared to the highly complex religions and the iconographies of the

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Romans, the Greeks, and for heaven's sakes, the Egyptians, who had an immensely complicated religion.

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So all you've got to do is believe that. Well, but still that's not doing things so well.

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So we have all these different religions. There's a traveler who goes to a little town, and there in the small town, he sees two churches, one in each street corner.

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And he says to someone in the town, how can this be? There doesn't seem like enough people for one church. The fellow says, well, there was a religious schism here in the church.

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The church on this side of the street says there ain't no hell. The church over here says the hell there ain't.

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Okay, so now how are you going to know which one is right? Another traveler,

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I've got lots of traveler stories, stops at a field, asks direction. Says to the farmer, says,

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God certainly has been good to your fields. And the fellow says, well, you should have seen him when God had him on his own.

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You know, let's give ourselves a little credit that people do things.

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How did we get the laws of logic? The same way we got the laws of arithmetic, Presbyterians, the multiplication table, the alphabet, and everything else.

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People thought it up. Human minds did. And of course it is modified.

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The laws of logic have modified over the years, over the centuries. And there are not just two possibilities.

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There is a God or there is not. Well, I don't know. Is that true? What do you think? Do you suppose those are the only possibilities? Let me propose to you, and then we'll probably get into intelligent design, that God had to make this watch as if there's...

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Now, if you don't know the difference between mechanical things and mechanical parts and biological processes and living things, go to college and learn.

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There's so much to say in so little time, you know. You notice that Matt hasn't told us what the characteristics of the

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God are. He said the Christian God, but the Presbyterian, the

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Lutheran, the Roman Catholic, that Pope is in town. They had mass for 46 ,000 people.

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American atheists had 46 people protesting. They shouldn't be too worried. And in the mass, the

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Holy Eucharist, if you're Roman Catholic, you believe that you're ingesting the actual flesh and blood of the

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God. That's called transubstantiation. If you're Protestant, you believe it's merely symbolic.

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Dare we call it, swallow the leader. Ooh, how about that?

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One of my writings I called Mary Magdalene, a deranged hooker. That got me in a lot of trouble, too. Mary Magdalene is the only consistent character in the

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Gospel accounts. The only one that appears in all of them. And she thought that Jesus had saved her from seven demons.

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So, whether she was a moral person or not, I don't know. And what is moral? What does that mean?

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I mean, when I was your age in college, everybody smoked. Depending on the college, they could smoke in here.

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They smoked in airplanes, in hospitals, even in the minister's office, in courtrooms, movie theaters, all kinds of places.

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Now it is almost a sin to smoke, and nobody does. It's not always unlawful, but it's certainly lower class.

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And that simply happened as a movement of people and of civilizations.

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The reason we develop laws of morality and laws against killing each other and so on, is very simply that we would not have survived if we did not.

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It's that simple. And the human race did not need ten commandments to tell them, thou should not kill each other.

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It's not a good idea. They were merely reporting what they'd already learned. I am a lawyer in my day job, and in that capacity, if someone sits in my office and informs me that they are a born -again

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Christian, I say thanks for the warning. Because I know that person is going to try to do something because they are holy and important and favored by God and so on.

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The same kind of people when a ship goes down and sinks and Aunt Tilly is hanging onto a piece of wood and everybody else has drowned horribly, prays, look what

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God did in saving me. The arrogance and the hubris of that is overwhelming, and when it is translated into the behavior of countries, we get absurdities called war.

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And the way to avoid that is through the use of humanistic principles.

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Now I want you to know that it is okay not to believe in God. There's a whole movement of people trying to tell you that's not the case, that it's very bad not to believe in God.

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I have come up with a little phrase, the word atheist. Now remember, atheist does not say there is no

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God. You'll find some dictionaries who say that. I know that. The 1911

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Encyclopedia Britannica said that atheism is a bizarre pretension. That no sane person could believe there is not a

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God, therefore they must be not. So, you know, don't define me.

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Matt is not going to define atheists, and I'm not going to permit that, and he's not going to set up straw men and say here's the way atheists are, and now

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I'll show you what's wrong with that argument when it's not. Atheist. A -T -H -E -I -S -T.

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How about this? Another thinking human engaged in seeking truth.

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I invented that. That's an Edwinian original expression. Edwin Kagan, atheist.

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Another thinking human engaged in seeking truth. Isn't that nuts?

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I want you to know it is okay to be an atheist, and it is okay not to believe in God.

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My Helen and I started Camp Quest some 13 years ago, a camp for the children of non -believers.

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It's absolutely horrified some people. They think if you don't believe in God, you're some kind of filthy, loathsome thing.

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But we find that the children that come there are from environments where they feel persecuted.

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People want to criticize them and condemn them because they are not believers. And they often cry and say it's the only time they felt safe to share these views with one another.

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We have a questionnaire at the end of Camp Quest that said, What have you learned at Camp Quest? One little beautiful girl said,

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I have learned it is okay not to believe in God. She didn't know that before. She didn't know it was okay not to believe in God.

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And God is the panacea for everything. I wrote this for you too. If some facts just will not fit, if the lamp of knowledge is dimly lit, and life is getting out of hand with things you do not understand, do not give up.

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Do not quit. Just explain that God did it. Then you're okay.

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You have all the answers. You don't need to learn anything more. Thank you. Welcome back to the UWF Conference Center.

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We're resuming the debate of the question tonight, Does God Exist? We'll begin with the ten minute response by Reverend Matt Slick.

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I would also let you know that both of these gentlemen I'm sure will have information about their organizations should you wish to talk to them individually after the debate concludes this evening.

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So we will continue now with Reverend Slick's ten minute response. Thank you.

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All right. I'm going to be nice here. Mr. Kagan.

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Edwin. Edwin. A little older than I am. I'm not going to say how much. I mean I'm in my 50s, so he's at least 52.

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Now... It's okay, kid. Go ahead. I respect my elders and I really do believe that.

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But Mr. Edwin, I actually was hoping you would actually address the argument that I've raised and you misrepresented some of the things

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I said. Now, yes, I think you said that there are more than two, in this case, there are only two possibilities.

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I mean there really is only two possibilities. There's either a God or there's no God. I mean, that's it. You know?

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Unless you've got invisible pink unicorns you want to ask about, but that's not going to work. You see, there either is or there is not a

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God. And we have this issue of logic before us, the very rationality that we use to judge debates, to grade papers in school, to see what is or what is not good or true.

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I mean, not necessarily good, but at least what's true and valid as well as invalid. You use logic because you must use logic.

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If you don't use it, then how am I to expect you to be logical or vice versa? You certainly would not expect me to say, hey, blue sleeves faster than Wednesday.

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That's why I win a debate. You would expect that. You would expect something more cogent, wouldn't you?

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I hope I have already given you a cogent argument. I have run this argument by atheists for years. I have not yet found an atheist who can refute it.

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And I'm glad to say that that concludes this evening. And I don't mean any disrespect to my opponent,

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Mr. Kagan. Ed, sorry. Now, he said that I have the burden of proof.

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I've given you an argument that has not been refuted. If I offer an argument and it has not been refuted, then what are we to conclude in the debate?

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If I argue something and he does not refute it, what do you conclude? Now, it doesn't mean that I have proved something, because if someone's not able to refute something, it does not necessitate that the argument

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I've presented is thus valid and I haven't proven it. However, since there are only two possibilities,

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God exists or God does not exist, logic is something we must use. How does my world view as a Christian theist and how does his world view as an atheist account for the existence of logic?